Upcoming Events
1st April – AGM 2025
It’s time for our 2025 Annual General Meeting! All members are welcome and encouraged to come along to the meeting to see how Cambridge Writers is run, and be a part of steering our direction for the future. The AGM is only open to fully paid up members of Cambridge Writers. Our
6th May – Anita Lehmann
‘Show Don’t Tell’ Workshop In May we welcome Anita Lehmann, an award-winning, internationally published author of over a dozen books for both children and adults. Anita also runs courses and workshops to help writers get on with their projects, complete them and ultimately get published. She provides assistance with everything from simply
3rd June – Flash Fiction Competition Results Night 2025
Our flash fiction competition is judged on the night, in person. Simply bring a printed copy of your story, with title but WITHOUT your name on it, to the meeting on 3rd June. The word limit is pretty tight, at 250, which does not include the title. When penning your story, make
2nd September – Steps in the Search for an Agent or Publisher
Your book is finished, you’re ready to take the plunge – or are you? Siobhan Carew takes us through the process of acquiring an agent or approaching a publisher with your finished project.
7th October – Gytha Lodge
Gytha is a playwright, novelist and writer for video games. After studying English at Cambridge she became known for dark and twisty drama. Her debut novel She Lies in Wait was an international bestseller. Her crime novels feature DCI Jonah Sheens.
4th November – James Blatch
James is a former BBC Defence Reporter, he has reported from HMS Invincible, Kuwait, and the Arctic Circle. He now writes bestseller Cold War thrillers.
Our monthly writers’ events are held at: Hartington Grove Meeting House.
91-93 Hartington Grove
Cambridge
CB1 7UB
Non-members are welcome to attend most events, at a charge of £3. Please contact our chairman Harry Goode if you would like to come along.
If you have any suggestions for speakers you would like to hear at our writers’ events, please contact our programme secretary, Karin Milner.
Recent Events
3rd May – Deborah Balm
Deborah Balm is an audiobook narrator of fiction and non-fiction books. A relatable, contemporary native British female voice artist with a smidge of sass. Born in Yorkshire, she now lives in Cambridge after her career in software engineering took her from Leicester, to Basel, and on to Amsterdam. Her background in singing performance and musical theatre dovetailed perfectly with her
5th April – AGM (Online) – Members Only
Our Annual General Meeting will be held online this year, over Zoom. All members are encouraged to attend. It’s your chance to hear how the group is doing, understand more fully how it is run and put forth opinions on various subjects. Our Chairman, Harry Goode, will be sending out email invites to members closer to the date, so please
Routes to Publishing – 1st February 2022 (Online)
Online Workshop: Siobhan Carew will be hosting this workshop over Zoom on the various routes to publishing. Routes to Publishing There are two main routes to publishing: through a traditional agent/publisher, or by self-publishing. Within those choices, there are sub-choices. Few traditional publishers take on work directly. They usually prefer agents to act as intermediaries, filtering the wheat from the
1st March 2022 – Short Story Competition Results Evening (Online)
Our March meeting will take place online via Zoom, and will comprise the results of the Cambridge Writers 2022 short story competition. Our competition this year was judged by Andrew Cowan, Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. Since his first prize-winning novel Pig (1994), he’s written four more novels depicting people in provincial worlds. The theme
7th December 2021 – Giles Yeo
Giles Yeo is a geneticist with over 20 years’ experience dedicated to researching obesity and the brain control of food intake. His current research focuses on understanding how these pathways differ from person to person, and the influence of genetics in our relationship with food and eating habits. Giles will present his book, Gene Eating: The Science of Obesity and
2nd November 2021 – Sophie Hannah
Sophie Hannah is a Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling writer of crime fiction, published in forty-nine languages and fifty-one territories. Her books have sold millions of copies worldwide. In 2014, with the blessing of Agatha Christie’s family and estate, Sophie published a new Poirot novel, The Monogram Murders, which was a bestseller in more than fifteen countries. She has since
5th October 2021 – Rosie Sykes
Rosie Sykes is a food writer and chef, living in London and Cambridge who was, at one time, Head Chef at Fitzbillies. She has cooked in the kitchens of some of Britain’s most celebrated chefs, including Joyce Molyneux, Shaun Hill and Alastair Little. Her critically acclaimed gastropub, The Sutton Arms in Smithfields, London, established her as one of the most
6th September 2021 – Professor Andrew Cowan
Andrew Cowan studied at the University of East Anglia, where he is now Director of Creative Writing and teaches on the Creative Writing MA. Since his acclaimed and prize winning first novel, Pig (1994), he wrote another four novels which depict people in provincial worlds; there is an interest in the domestic, in the mechanics of relationships when the blood-rush
1st June 2021 – Flash Fiction Competition
Competitors bring a printed copy of their anonymous entry to the meeting, word limit 250
4th May 2021 – Workshop
How do I blindside my reader without completely cheating them? How do I lay a trail of clues without my plot becoming predictable? This workshop is designed to help you answer those questions and more. We will be covering the five different types of foreshadowing, including Chekhov’s gun, prophecy, flashback, symbolic foreshadowing, and red herring, discussing examples in literature and